Google Ads Quality Score is one of those metrics that can make a 40–50% difference in what you pay per click — yet it’s often treated as a vanity number to optimise for its own sake. This guide explains what Quality Score actually measures, how it affects your performance in concrete terms, and which changes genuinely move it versus which ones are wasted effort.
What Is Google Ads Quality Score?
Quality Score is a 1–10 rating that Google assigns to each keyword in your account. It’s a diagnostic tool, not a direct performance metric — Google uses it to give you a signal about how competitive your ads and landing pages are relative to other advertisers targeting the same keyword.
The score is calculated from three components, each rated as Above Average, Average, or Below Average:
- Expected CTR: How likely is your ad to be clicked when it appears for this keyword, compared to other ads?
- Ad Relevance: How closely does your ad copy match the intent behind the search query?
- Landing Page Experience: How relevant, useful, and well-structured is the page your ad links to?
A score of 1–3 means you’re underperforming on at least one component. A score of 7–10 means you’re competitive or better. Most well-managed accounts sit in the 5–7 range for most keywords.
Why Quality Score Matters: The CPC Effect
Here’s why Google Ads Quality Score is worth caring about. Google’s auction doesn’t just reward the highest bidder — it rewards the combination of bid and quality, called Ad Rank:
Ad Rank = Bid × Quality Score × Expected Impact of Extensions
Your actual CPC is then determined by the formula:
Actual CPC = (Ad Rank of Next Advertiser ÷ Your Quality Score) + £0.01
In practical terms: a Quality Score of 8 can let you outrank a competitor bidding 30–50% more than you, while paying less per click. Conversely, a Quality Score of 3 means you’re paying a premium for every click just to compete with better-optimised accounts.
WordStream analysis across thousands of accounts has estimated that moving from a QS of 5 to a QS of 8 can reduce CPC by 25–30% for the same keywords. That’s a significant budget saving that compounds over months.
What Actually Improves Quality Score
Expected CTR: Write Better Ad Copy
Expected CTR is assessed relative to the keyword and match type — it’s asking whether your ad is more or less likely to be clicked than a typical ad for the same query. Improving it means writing ad copy that is more relevant, more compelling, or clearer in its value proposition than competing ads.
Specifically: include the target keyword in at least one headline. Write headlines that speak directly to the searcher’s intent. Use specific numbers or claims rather than vague benefit statements. Add a clear CTA. Ad extensions (sitelinks, callouts, call extensions) also increase the visual footprint of your ad, which improves CTR without changing your copy.
Ad Relevance: Tighten Your Ad Groups
Ad Relevance measures how closely your ad copy matches the theme of the keywords in the ad group. The most effective fix for low Ad Relevance is restructuring into tighter ad groups — ideally 5–10 closely related keywords per group — and writing ad copy specific to that tight theme.
The classic mistake: one ad group with 50 different keyword variations and one generic set of ads that loosely covers all of them. The fix: split by specific intent (informational vs transactional vs brand), by product type, or by keyword theme, and write tailored copy for each.
Landing Page Experience: Improve Post-Click Relevance
Landing Page Experience is evaluated based on how well your landing page delivers on the promise made in your ad — relevance, transparency, navigability, and load speed. Google’s crawlers assess your page periodically, so changes to your landing page do affect your Quality Score, but with a lag of days to weeks.
The most impactful improvements: ensure the keyword phrase appears in your landing page headline and body copy (relevance signal), improve page load speed (usability signal), and make sure the page clearly delivers what the ad promised (trust signal). Removing interstitials and pop-ups that obscure content on mobile also helps.
Related reading: The Complete Guide to Google Display Ads vs. Search Ads
What Doesn’t Improve Quality Score (Common Misconceptions)
- Pausing low-QS keywords: Pausing doesn’t improve the score — you need to fix the underlying components. Pause only if the keyword isn’t worth improving.
- Raising bids: Bids have no direct effect on Quality Score. Higher bids won’t improve your rating.
- Adding exact match duplicates: Duplicate keywords with different match types share Quality Score components — adding an exact match version of a phrase match keyword doesn’t automatically improve QS.
- Chasing a 10: A score of 10 is rare and not the goal. Consistently delivering scores of 7–8 across your account is a sign of a well-structured, well-optimised campaign. The goal is profitability, not a perfect score.
How to Prioritise Quality Score Fixes
Don’t try to improve every keyword simultaneously. Prioritise by impact: focus on high-impression, high-spend keywords with Quality Scores below 5. Use the “Quality Score” column in your Keywords view to sort, then look at the sub-components (Expected CTR, Ad Relevance, Landing Page Experience) to identify which component is dragging the score down.
Fix one component at a time so you can measure what’s actually moving the needle. Landing Page Experience fixes take longer to show up; Expected CTR and Ad Relevance improvements are reflected within days.
Final Thoughts
Google Ads Quality Score is not a metric to optimise in isolation — it’s a diagnostic signal pointing to where your account’s fundamentals need work. The improvements that raise Quality Score (better ad copy, tighter ad groups, more relevant landing pages) are the same improvements that make campaigns more profitable overall. Think of it as a report card on your account’s health, and focus on the underlying fixes rather than the score itself.
Marquee conducts Quality Score audits as part of our Google Ads management service. If your CPCs are higher than they should be, low Quality Scores are usually the first place to look.
Want expert help with your account? See our Google Ads management service.